This Day In Aviation History

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You know, many people think that mathematics is so complicated. This is wrong. Mathematics is an extremely simple approximation of the world. The world itself is more complicated than anything we can think of.

Cédric Villani, 2010 Fields Medal winner for “his work on developing equations to describe the movement of gas and plasma” [Science Show] (via we-are-star-stuff)

Mechanical Principles by Ralph Steiner (1930)

A picture from the un-official German Grand Prix held at the Solitudering, Stuttgart, in 1964. Jim Clark was the winner.

The gif animation of folding the net of the tesseract(8-cell). ;-)

There are many kinds of the net of the tesseract.

http://hyrodium.tumblr.com/post/67134693288/hyrodiums-photostream-on-flickr-there-are-many

Joel Tettamanti - Greenland

how do you feel about tau

τ is cool, but really not practical for me. 

And I honestly do not feel like the τ vs π argument makes any sense at all. The two numbers are both technically correct and are just different ways of relating the circumference of a circle to two related, but DIFFERENT aspects of its geometry. 

As far as learning goes, τ does make a lot more intuitive sense than π and I will definitely give it that. It most certainly does make sense to relate the radius of a circle to its circumference! 

But the idea that π is wrong and that τ is somehow “more correct” is a weird logical fallacy:

There is a relation between the diameter of a circle and the circumference called π

There is a relation between the radius of a circle called τ

We use the measurements utilizing radii more than we use diameters

Therefore π is wrong. 

???? This argument doesn’t make sense. They’re two different relationships based on two different things. It’s like saying Fahrenheit is wrong because Celsius is easier to use.    

From the stance of someone in astrophysics, I really don’t think making τ the standard is practical at all. I have issues with it because τ is used as a symbol for many many MANY other things in my field. We use τ to represent time constants, optical depths, and torque and I feel like making the switch would be incredibly difficult and confusing because we use π in some of those. It’d make my life (and a bunch of other peoples’ lives) a lot more difficult to make the big shift, especially since π is not technically incorrect given its definition.

I say that both of them are good. I’m in camp “using π” because it’s most practical for me, but I don’t care if someone else uses τ because it works for them! 

Ok I got distracted but anyways yes this is my opinion

Ravensburg (Baden-Württemberg)